“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity”

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity” is a line from William Butler Yeats’s “The Second Coming,” used as an epigraph to the chapter titled “Removal.” Placed between the revelation that Ron Lafferty and Dan Lafferty had killed people and the account of Brenda Lafferty standing up for Dianna Lafferty and the other wives, it supplies a moral contrast for the chapter: forceful certainty can belong to those doing harm, while the people resisting them face danger without comparable power.

Placement in the Chapter

The chapter opens with Bernard Brady recalling a phone call from Tim Lafferty on the morning after the killings. Tim told him that Ron and Dan had carried out the revelation and killed people the previous day; Brady remembers collapsing as he tried to absorb the news. The chapter title, “Removal,” and Yeats’s lines follow that account, making the poem an interpretive threshold between the brothers’ claimed religious warrant and the violence it produced.

The epigraph is not presented as a character’s speech or as part of the events themselves. It is a framing quotation, identified as coming from “The Second Coming.” Its position invites the reader to consider the killings not as evidence of spiritual conviction in itself, but as an instance of conviction turned toward destruction.

The Contrast in the Lines

The phrase sets “the best” against “the worst,” and lack of conviction against passionate intensity. Its force comes from the imbalance: moral restraint may hesitate, while destructive certainty acts with energy. In the chapter’s immediate context, that contrast resonates with the brothers’ decision to act on the removal revelation and with the fear surrounding them.

The lines also lead into Yeats’s prediction that “Surely the Second Coming is at hand.” The surrounding poem’s language of revelation and impending upheaval echoes the chapter’s religious framing, where an asserted revelation precedes lethal action. The epigraph thus places the episode within a wider pattern of apocalyptic expectation without making the poem itself an explanation for the brothers’ conduct.

Relation to Brenda Lafferty’s Resistance

The chapter turns from the brothers’ violence to Brenda Lafferty’s fear of the Laffertys, including Allen Lafferty, and her willingness to stand up for Dianna and the other wives. When her assertiveness embarrassed Allen before his brothers, he berated her with fury and at times beat her. The epigraph’s contrast therefore bears on more than the killings: it also frames the unequal conditions under which Brenda resisted family control, even before she knew about the removal revelation.

By placing the poem before this account, the chapter juxtaposes passionate certainty with a quieter form of moral resolve. Brenda’s resistance does not erase her fear or make her safe; its significance lies in her continuing to defend others despite the danger. In that sequence, the epigraph becomes a lens on the chapter’s central opposition between religiously charged force and the vulnerable people who oppose it.